BSNL awards over 200 million euro contract to Nokia

MUMBAI: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has chosen Nokia to expand its GSM/EDGE and GPRS network in North India in a deal valued at over 200 million euro.

Nokia will deploy four million lines across towns, cities, villages and all major state and national highways in the States of Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Uttaranchal, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh (both east and west circles), Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan.

As a part of the agreement that can be extended further, Nokia will supply both core and GSM/EDGE and GPRS radio network equipment, including Base Station Subsystems, Switching Subsystems, Intelligent Network, GPRS Core Network, Short Message Service System, Multimedia Messaging center expansion and Nokia Download Solution. Nokia 5140 handsets are also included.

"BSNL's vision is to be India's largest cellular operator with a truly national network footprint providing world class services to consumers across the country. The recent tender for network expansion is testimony of our commitment to bring affordable access, to Indians anywhere, anytime across the country," said BSNL chairman and managing director A K Sinha.

"To achieve this vision, BSNL has chosen Nokia to expand its network by four million lines in North India as Nokia has the requisite experience and expertise in building high quality networks," said BSNL director (commercial and marketing) N K Mangla.

"This tender for a GSM turnkey cellular project is one of the largest projects, which will be installed and rolled-out just in nine months, in the world," said S D Saxena, director (finance).

"Nokia is proud to collaborate with BSNL, India's leading telecommunications company, on this significant GSM network expansion exercise," said Nokia country head, India and South Asia Networks Ashish Chowdhary. "This deployment will enable BSNL to continue offering world-class network quality and services to its end consumers," he added.

"This deal also underscores Nokia's commitment to India, fulfilling our promise to bring high-quality equipment and advanced services to India's mobile world," said Chowdhary. "With this deal, Nokia becomes an equipment supplier to all five leading GSM operators in India."